Even when approached with a seemingly outlandish research idea, the one word that isn’t in analytical chemist Aaron Wheeler’s vocabulary is “no.” Instead, he might be skeptical, says Mais Jebrail, one of Wheeler’s PhD students, but he’ll say, “Try it out and convince me.”
Wheeler has used his expertise in microfluidics to explore applications far beyond the separation and chemical analysis of droplets on tiny chips. At his University of Toronto laboratory, Wheeler and his team have used mazes made from miniscule channels to probe the learning capabilities of C. elegans1 and measured hormone levels from just a microliter of breast tissue.
As a chemistry undergraduate at Furman University in South Carolina, Wheeler wanted to work on life science problems and even considered medical school. But, in 1996, an analytical chemistry course forged a link between his love of instruments and optics and his fascination with biomedicine.
As a PhD ...
